Choosing New Garage Doors – Prior Considerations (Part 1)

There are indeed enormous choices when it comes to garage doors. Deciding to remodel or even to change the right one is essential task as you will look at this door when you leave your house and return home in daily regular basis. For keeping your vehicles and other valuables, your garage door should be sturdy, safe, practical, but also attractive. Those features will allow you to gain the best benefits possible and offer you a long lasting door.

Therefore, before bringing home a garage door, you’d better take into account some important factors that will helpfully guide you.

Price

It can be said that price is obviously the first consideration in the process of deciding and even buying any garage door. Actually this is a hard thing to do or recommend for garage doors are available in broad range of types, sizes, materials, and also other further personal preferences you want to.

For example, timber doors commonly have higher price compared to steel of fiberglass (GRP) garage doors. However, if you cannot afford a timber door, there will be alternatives of relatively low priced aluminum or steel products featured with highly developed laminate finishes that will recreate very realistic wood effects.

Another factor that’s going have impact on price is the garage door mechanism. The example can be the different mechanism you can find in a vertical boarded one piece up and over door in comparison with vertically boarded round the corner sliding typed door. The latter is probably more costly.

Furthermore, more considerations that will contribute to the different prices of different garage doors are insulation, glazing, factory finishes, special sizes, and so on.

One good advice for you is beware of a ‘cheap’ garage door. These doors are usually large items and with cheap parts or insufficient panel strength.

Material

Garage door materials will address some concerns such as durability and security as well as insulation. The material you choose will also determine the maintenance required. Whatever you pick, you will need to clean and oil the tracks every year. Popular materials used for garage doors are steel, timber, aluminum, PVC and GRP.

Timber

Timber is very versatile and the designs are immeasurable if you feel that a standard design does not suit. Wood doors are highly ideal for home living designed in traditional style. They’re going to offer or keep warmth. Moreover, they are also affordable ones.

As stated earlier, you will get great variation in price when choosing timber garage doors as they have different timber species. The most common species are normally cedar wood, oak, hemlock, iroko and larch.

Woods are prone to termites, hence you will need to do staining and sealing every four years.

Steel

A steel garage door should usually be the strongest and sectional doors can be offered in double skin panels up to 45mm thick with marvelous strength and insulation properties. Steel is indeed one of the best materials for garage doors because it is not only affordable and durable, but also stylish. You can easily style and maintain them. Depending on your need or personal taste, you may choose a plain stainless steel garage door or a painted one.

If you’re really fond of the look of timber but do not have the time or tendency to maintain such a garage door, you can consider a steel up and over or sectional door with a laminate woodgrain finish, available in most colours required.

Garage Door Design

Aluminum

Aluminium is widely only employed for insulated double skin roller doors and a couple of specialized sectional doors. It is much like steel, only lighter and cheaper. The only disadvantage is aluminum doors are prone to dents.

The metals need not be prone to hitting, thereby steel or aluminum is somewhat not a good choice for garages located near trees, playground, etc.

Indeed, sometimes the material you need is dictated by your house exterior, local planning regulations or perhaps even location. As an example, when you live in a coastal area, steel garage door will not be a nice idea in general as it is prone to corrosion, particularly when constantly exposed to saltwater.

GRP

GRP is also very varied and is increasingly applied extensively for most mechanisms. The reason is because it does offers outstanding strength if correctly produced.Fiberglass doors are placed in aluminum frames. They are best when it comes to resisting dents as well as corrosion due to salt water. They can also be painted in any color you desire to.

Once again, watch out of cheap GRP doors, they are only unremarkably low-priced as they have very little material in them.

Garage Door Makeover

Mechanism

Most people or homeowners select a garage door simply by their designs and sizes. As a result they only pay little attention to the mechanism, or how it may (or may not) operate in their garage designs.

There are some operating mechanism in garage doors which can be based on the types like sectional, roller, canopy, side-hinged, and many more. That operation will be highly depend on the spaces inside and outside your garage.

For instance, when you have a narrow garage with limited space near the entrance, then it is normally ideal to purchase a roller door, and not an ‘up and over’ one piece door. If your garage has a low ceiling, you probably need to think and choose a side-hinged door rather than a sectional one, as the latter demands a bit more headroom. Moreover, side hinged garage doors offer a lot more benefits for regularly used garages, since you only open one side to enter and exit, similar to a normal door.Remember that you must cautiously check garage door sizes to make sure they fit well with your garage door opening. There are garage doors which are available in standard sizes. You can do some adjustments around the sub frame to compromise the whole performance of the door and frame. You can get your purpose made garage door by spending a little extra cost.

When you’re planning to use an electric door opener, you need to check with a specialist on the best door and motor combination.